


The Truths Plants Tell

by Ortholeine



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Healing, Post-Civil War, Spoilers, The Raft Prison (Marvel), except for Maria and Wanda, female bonding, hinted at torture, most are mentioned, or quoted, recovery fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7960285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ortholeine/pseuds/Ortholeine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda was tortured by those in charge of the Raft. Maria was tortured by those in Hydra who specialized in breaking. Together they needed something other than medicine, drugs, or IVs to heal. They needed space and peace and isolation and it turned out they needed each other as well. A friendship is born in the still-empty places in their souls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truths Plants Tell

_“Even Rogers spent a few weeks here after he defrosted.”_ It’s a small little cabin in the woods, with a clearing and lake nearby. Wanda sighs with her arms crossed over her chest. It was quaint and very American, yet still small. Especially after the palace in Wakanda. Their healers and doctors had done what they could but nothing was a better medicine than time. Especially after what they had gone through.

Wanda felt out with her powers, near-invisible threads of red power drifting through the air to the garden behind their shared cabin until they found her housemate. Maria Hill knelt in the dirt just staring at the young plants with clear labels of their names in English and Latin both. Wanda walked to their living room, watching her companion out the back windows.

_“It wasn’t pretty, what they pulled her out from. Between Romanov and May, there were none left breathing if they were even left alive.”_

She had not experienced a walk in the park aboard that floating prison, but she had been able to retreat deep inside her mind to a place only her powers granted her access to. Maria had no such escape from her pain, not without damaging something precious. And so Wanda watched over her housemate, sharing kindness in the ways she knew how. Food from her homeland, tales she remembers being told as a child.

Maria shares stories normally too classified to even be mentioned about everyone. She talks about any and every person that Wanda asks about, but the secret agent knows better the be simply grateful that there is one person never asked about. The young woman quickly earning the codename of Scarlett Witch had not needed to use her powers to know not to ask about the good captain. She had watched them dance around each other in the months leading up to Hill’s abduction. She had not been blind the hidden meetings, the sly touches when they thought no one was looking and the occasional kisses when no one was looking.

_“You both need to get away from the world. This cabin is safe and no one but us know about it. You from people who will let their fear control their actions. Her from any enemies who might want to take advantage of a vulnerable Maria Hill. And…Steve Rogers will not take well to being kept from her.”_

She had not been blind to how the man who had always been on her side had felt betrayed, had made assumptions of the woman’s involvement with the other team, had not thought to look deeper into the unanswered text messages and unreturned phone calls. It was not until a helicopter containing some surprising people had landed on capital’s hospital roof.

A dark skinned man with sunglasses that never left his face. A dead man with sunglasses he removed indoors, a lanyard hanging with his tie. A small woman with just as much strength in her limbs as the Black Widow herself. A strange tube-like contraption they soon learned was a cryogenic chamber, and the dark haired infamous Maria Hill herself.

Wanda blinked and found herself free from that memory. A flash of pain, a flash of sunlight, and she felt herself flinching. She sighed and refocused on her companion, who was still staring at the plant but this time watering it with a bright green watering can.

Maria Hill was a mystery to Wanda, who had once not known anything but to show her emotions. To feel strongly and nothing else. Her relationship with the good captain had been short, from Wanda’s knowledge, but good for both of them. Wanda had seen the potential of that with herself and—she pursed her lips and turned around, pulling her knit sweater tighter around her body.

_“It’ll take time for both of you. Maybe you can learn something from each other, help one another heal the wounds no medicine can.”_

She sat down on the old couch and picked up a book. She ran the pads of her fingertips of her right hand over the engraved leather cover in gentle strokes before lifting the front cover open. The scent of musty paper and dust filled the air as the first few chapters gently drifted closed to reveal the first sheets of paper. _Pride and Prejudice_ the title page read, and Wanda couldn’t help a soft chuckle.

The sound of a door opening and closing was the only warning Wanda had before Maria was collapsing on the couch next to her. Her eyes were closed, a light sheen of sweat gracing her forehead. She breathed heavily as if she had just walked miles, not feet.

“I wish I knew how to grow things,” Hill said quietly, “but I could never even keep a cactus alive let alone these plants.”

Wanda gave her new friend a small smile.

“Not these gentle plants? What secrets do they hold?”

Maria grinned with her face but her eyes showed no humor.

“Too many.”

 

Two months have passed, with no word from the outside, no news no contact. Their smiles come easier now, laughter and jokes no longer tinged by pain, the nightmares less traumatizing but just as frequent. Maria hears a sound she hasn’t heard in many months. A text message being received. Two, in fact. One to each burner phone. She watches as the young woman raises a hand and uses her magic to have the phone fly into her hands, feels Wanda glancing at her sitting in the hammock on the porch out front. She reads the text from an unmarked number. It said only “I love you. Come back.”

Maria felt her heart come to a stuttering stop before beating quickly. Her fingers hovered the letters to respond, not sure how or what or even if she should. She looked at the Avenger standing on the other side of the wall out of the corner of her eye, saw the pale face but bright eyes and knew. She sighed, letting her head fall back. She closed her eyes and just breathed.

_“Watch her. Don’t let her fall into that dark abyss.”_

_“You’re waxing poetic, sir.”_

_“Don’t be smart with me Hill. Just heal and get back to your damn job.”_

In a single fluid motion, she stood, putting a hand against the wooden post holding up one end of the hammock as the dizziness she couldn’t seem to shake grew strong in a sudden surge.

Before she could make the move to walk inside the door was opening and Wanda was looking at her with something not quite hope but close enough on her face.

“It’s high time we went back,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “we’ve got work to do.”

And so the cabin was locked up, their things packed into a suitcase apiece, nothing out of place except for a now-worn copy of one of Jane Austen’s first novels hidden next to a pistol and a pair or red white and blue socks. They strode onto the Quinjet in step with each other. Coulson greeted them, shaking their hands and nodding. He and Maria sat next to each other while Wanda chose her own seat on the far side from them.

“So,” he began, some hint of hesitation in his voice. Before he could finish the Sokovian native spoke.

“We made some cookies yesterday if you’re interested.” And that was that.

When they landed there were some familiar faces that greeted them. The red headed assassin surprised no one by throwing an arm around Wanda’s shoulders, making eye contact with Maria and nodding. The woman with a voice suspiciously similar to an animated Chinese hero pulled Maria into a tight hug that did shock some people. But it was the distance the tall blond and blue-eyed man kept that was a mystery to most there on that landing pad.

Hours later and Maria was standing in her apartment, silently missing the woods and garden and companionship that cabin had offered for exactly 47 days. A knock that was plain and common but still betrayed who it was preceded the sliding hiss of her door. Maria put the book she had been holding in her hands down on the coffee table and walked to her window. She felt him stop behind her, and hugged her arms around her torso.

The physical wounds had stopped actually hurting weeks before but the one in her heart that she had ignored was still aching. He cleared his throat a few times before speaking.

“I missed you.”

Something caused her to start shaking, but she chose to ignore it as he kept talking.

“I…I wasn’t ready for that sort of relationship problem. I expected a disagreement over kids and marriage maybe but not global politics. But Maria…”

Something cracked in his voice and her soul as he said her name. She turned around slowly, and desperately hoped that her eyes weren’t betraying everything she felt and tried not to feel.

“I would have still sided with the Accords.” She blurted.

The first thing out of her mouth to him in over and year and that’s what it was. Maria swallowed and tried again, unconsciously backing up against the window.

“They’re right in that you need to be reined in, have some sort of oversight. But nothing so underhand like that. I know Pepper leaving turned Stark back into the idiot he naturally is, but I would have had to choose the greater good…” she trailed off as he started walking towards her. There was a hint of amusement in his eyes, but it was overshadowed by something everything more dangerous. Something serious and bright and something she was not ready for at all.

He stopped his slow charge mere centimeters away, his eyes flickering from her lips to her own eyes.

“I know. I still love you,” he said. Steve Rogers was no coward. He was a reckless little punk from Brooklyn with the famed manners of the 40s when he wanted them. Right now though, there was something other than manners stopping him. Respect, understanding, she didn’t care. Maria just knew that she was finally ready to listen to the thins the plants had been whispering to her for 47 days now.

“I’m still thinking about it,” she whispering not even bothering to mask how she stared at his mouth. Her words no longer carried the bite they once had, her lips and teeth no longer drawing pain as she kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I finally started this while watching Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away with my family. I wanted it to be more vague and kind of soothing rather than focusing on the individual pains they both have/would have faced. I low-key ship Wanda and Vision but Captain Hill is one of my OTPs.


End file.
